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World War One and Acocks Green

The First World War started a century ago, and proved to be a shocking and far-reaching nightmare, which fundamentally changed British society and world politics. In Acocks Green, we have been
able to find evidence of life on the home front for young people, and memories of parents who fought. Acocks Green has its own controversial V.C. as well, associated with the War Poet Wilfred
Owen, no less.

The following memories were recorded in 1977 as part of a local history and identity project. Some minor editing has been done to improve the flow of the interviews.

Miss Edith Mahoney, 63 Shirley Road

I don’t remember much about the First World War. I think I was too young and irresponsible to notice things in those days. I was
very airy fairy, I must admit that. Mind you, it was wonderful when the war was over. We thought that was marvellous, but I did have a brother killed in the war. That was very unsettling. That
was the only thing really that brought the war to my notice.

In business we were flooded out with orders and it made us very busy – the war did. The war made a lot of difference to the
business of the textile trade, because everyone used a lot of black. They all went into high mourning, and it caused a big turnover in the trade, whereas now if anyone dies people don’t bother
about black now, and so it doesn’t make any difference, but in those days it did.

Taffy and Mrs Lewis, 93 Severne Road

My father got killed in the 1914-18 war. Before the war he was a chauffeur salesman. That’s a job that doesn’t exist now. When
the war broke out, unfortunately for him, he was on the reserve and he went in the A.F.C. 6/- a day. When you realise that the private soldiers were getting 1/- a day thousands of them
volunteered during the 1914-18 war. The first lot for 1/- a day and dad was getting 6/- But during the retreat in 1918 he got gassed. Sent him home to us. There was six of us and he died at home
from gas poisoning, but what they didn’t tell Mum, it had turned into what we called galloping consumption and that started it. They should never have sent Dad home to us in that condition, but
people knew they were doing wrong because I remember these doctors saying if you’d got money Mr Lewis, I could do something for you.

Mr Clark, who lived nearby, was originally an Evesham man, a timber specialist, and all he did was travel the country buying
walnut for the B.S.A. to use in gunmaking. When you come to think of the price of walnut now, and every gun that the B.S.A. used to make in those days Lee Enfield and Lewis, the butts and that
were made in walnut. That was during the First World War. That factory, I seen it built – they talk about modern building methods. Within two years of starting that factory they were making guns
in it and within three years there were three lavatories on each floor. There’s three blocks, about twelve floors – three lavatories to each floor and in each block there were three lifts, and
they were manned night and day, the lavatories and the lifts, by one-armed and one-legged ex-servicemen.

When I look around, they are all gone – dead. All the generation that left school two years in front of me, from Birmingham, they
went like that. They went into the army, one day 40,000-50,000 of them. People can’t visualise it. We used to see them coming to 1st Southern General Military Hospital. That was what
we now call the university. All lads in blue. One arm, one leg. No legs.

The things that happened after the war were out of this world. It was stupid. I was working at that time at the B.S.A.. November
11th, all the flags came up. We were out for the day to enjoy ourselves. November 12th, we couldn’t get into the factory, we were sacked. On Armistice Day I went home happy.
“The war’s over, Dad”. My father was dying in bed and he cried. He said: “They should have gone in and smashed ‘em up” he says “This’ll happen again”. I can remember those words, but I didn’t
care. The war was over. We went back to work the following day. There was no work for us. Every contract was cancelled – bang like that.

They told us to sign on the labour – they had only just started these things. They had taken over Sparkhill library and there was
a queue right down to Stratford Road, and the tail end of the queue was playing football in the park. That was the end of everything, you know, to me.

During the First World War, as a youth, I was upset about the Germans, because we knew for a fact that they were boiling bodies
down and using the fat to make candles. Now the real truth was that they were doing exactly the same that we ourselves were doing. If burial became too much of a problem, burn them. We’d done
exactly the same as they did. But the newspapers brought this racket about they were doing it to get the fat to make candles, and it made it seem much worse. Mind you, we’ve used napalm and God
knows what to burn civilians and that, but the newspapers have never sort of brought out the bad part of it, because we weren’t burning them to make candles – we were just burning them to kill
them.

No, why I was in the army, really, nothing to do with patriotism. I thought, as a good many more thought, if war broke out…You
could smell it a mile off, you could see it coming, because between us and Germany, it’s family business as well, like. The Royals were just as much mixed up in this battle as we were. Jealousy
between the Royal Families, and that was handed down. Jealousy between the manufacturers. Jealousy between the working class, and all that. All built up by the newspapers.

Tom Morris, 94 Westley Road

When I first came up to Acocks Green, the First World War was in progress, and I decided I didn’t want to go as far as town to
work. I got a job at the James Cycle Company in Greet on the universal miller. You were cutting metal. The firm then were producing 4.5 shells, eighteen pound shells, that’s the cast iron ones,
also hand grenades, Mills grenades. We produced the drills for making these on the universal miller, and it took rather a lot of calculations. You were expected to work that out yourself. They
didn’t come round and do your homework for you. You had to do it.

I volunteered for the munitions volunteer scheme, and they drafted me to Brook Tool. Which was quite near and a much more
interesting class of work, but after that they shot me off to Coventry, and I didn’t want to go. This firm in Coventry was making “hemming” magnetos, that’s what they were called. Now our usual
inept form of government, we were stuck, and completely stuck, for magnetos for aircraft engines, which were made in Coventry. Quite a big place there – Armstrong Whitworth – they couldn’t get
steel for the magnets for the magnetos. There was a lot of hoo-haa about it and our firm turned up at the Ministry of Supply, and said: “please, we want some work, or we shall have to shut down”
– “What do you do?” We said: “We make cobalt steel for the Germans to make magnetos”, and that’s how we proceeded in that war. I made myself so unpopular with the Manager that he let me go, and I
came back to the Whitworth Works, which was in Reddings Lane, near enough Acocks Green, and which had just started up again. I worked as a universal miller in the toolroom turning out ball
bearings for the general war effort.

I stayed there until the end of the war. I remember Armistice Day on the 11th of November. At 11 o’clock in the
morning they let off maroons. They went off and we all came out, marched out. Left the whole place. Not a soul, and we started our celebrations. However, we struck a bad patch then, with no work
and very little unemployment money. If I remember rightly, I used to get 18/6d per week unemployed money, and I had to go every day and report to Waverley Road Small Heath. Sign on to show you
were unemployed. No chance of any fiddles. There was no chance of any jobs.

We had queues for food, very primitive blackout. I can remember the Zeppelins coming over. They didn’t do any harm to use, but I
remember standing outside and seeing the airships. Aeroplanes were very few and far between.

Miss Adams, 97 Westley Road

The spirit of Acocks Green in the First World War was of a really wonderful community. The churches weren’t empty of people, but
they were empty of youth.

However, my eldest brother was at the university at the time, and it was discovered he had a heart condition, and no one would
accept into the Forces in any shape or form. And someone did the cruel thing in those days, of sending white feathers. A white feather meant you were a coward. I remember the morning it came. He
showed it to mother and he cried. He said: “I’ll go and enlist”. Mother said: “You’ll not enlist, laddie because they won’t accept you. It’s no good”. And he was crying on my mother’s shoulder, a
lad of eighteen. And he went into hospital shortly after that. They said go and get it controlled and right, and we’ll accept you afterwards. And I always remember that morning. If you thought
someone was being a coward and shirking, and their boys had gone…there’s always horrible people, even in those days. He was studying medicine. He was eight weeks in the old Queens Hospital, which
was in Bath Row. He’d been there as a student and he went there as a patient. He was studying all the time he was in hospital. As soon as he got his second qualification he went into the Navy as
a Surgeon Lieutenant. My other two brothers also went into the Forces.

Fred Cowan Senior in uniform on the right. He and his son ran Fred's Cafe on the Green

A lady sits by a bomb crater at Lakey Lane, caused by a Zeppelin raid

A bomb crater in a field belonging to Gospel Farm, April 1918. Hauptmann Kuno Manger’s Zeppelin L62 attacked Birminghamon 12 April, but he turned back after facing anti-aircraft fire before reaching the city centre, and dropped a 300kg bomb here.
(Thanks to Joe McKenna for this information.)

Of two of the men who did not return from the Great War, G.S. Pardoe died of fever whilst serving in Ireland. No record can be traced of A.G. Adams.

The Roman Catholic church in Acocks Green, Sacred Heart and Holy Souls, has a Roll of Honour in the porch. In fact, the Parish when founded had been dedicated to the Sacred heart of Jesus for the
Deliverance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory. The First World War made Father Gibbons determined that the new church should be a memorial to and a shrine of prayer for the victims of the War.

Army Chaplain Canon Gwyder O.S.B.

Aide-Major Jean Deramecourt (Croix de Guerre)

Captain Shirley C. Day (M.C.)

Captain E.J. Hugh Meynell (M.C.)

Lieut. Henry E. Bulbeck R.F.

Lieut. Bernard Ward Devas

Lieut. Charles J. Howell

Lieut. Basil R. Jones R.A.F.

Lieut. Oscar R. Kelly

Lieut. Vincent Narey B.A.

Lieut. Lawrence H. Ruck

2nd. Engineer Bernard Seddon

C.S.M. Horace H. Bowden

S.S.M. Thomas Cooper

Corporal J.T. Jones

L. Corporal Robert Moore

George F. Andrewes

Charles W. Assinder

John P. Driscoll

Francis M. Driscoll

Victor S. Galway Foley

James Kelly

"Longton Lads"

Walter F.J. Murphy

Philip M. Murphy

Cyril H. Murphy

William Narey

Herbert Newsham

Philip G. Powell

Walter Gossage

Edward Sharkey

John Vallance

Acocks Green Baptist church, like the Methodist church, has a wider-ranging list inside the church. Here the list identifies not only those killed but those disabled in service, and is
also an acknowledgment of all members who fought. Below is a list of those killed, then a photo of the memorial and a copy of the complete list.

The list below of men killed in the Great War has been compiled from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website in order to find people
not mentioned in the above lists. We have searched under the terms Acocks's Green and Acocks Green. There are nearly ninety records. We are aware it is incomplete (for example not all the
Methodist or St. Mary's church names are present) and would welcome any additional records. Fuller information, including the association of the deceased with Acocks Green, is shown in the
records below. Sometimes parts of the records are not available on the CWGC website, and a gap has been left in these cases.